There are the obvious ones: spend some money to make money, have kids so they can become caretakers later in life, put meat in oven and get hot meat later. This is pretty basic stuff here. Without realizing it, we all make a bunch of tiny investments each day. The reason we never pick up on this is because of the inherent risk factor in the things we do. Getting up and going to work in order to make some scratch for beer or whatever is an easy choice; it has very little effect on your life overall. With no risk involved and the reward being so routine (you goddamned alcoholic), the math becomes involuntary. Every decision made during the day, even the banal ones like when you choose to use the bathroom, are made in order to maximize some sort of future return. And you never see it.
But what about the high-risk decisions you make?
These can be a matter of scale, like when you place a big-money bet in a dead pool and Bob Barker refuses to die (he's always going over the actual regulation time limit). A chance was taken, and nothing was gained from it. Investments like this tend to be real assholes, because the calculations involved in them are not routine. We're risk-averse by nature; the tendency is to play it safe and avoid all the ways in which we can be killed, maimed, or otherwise fucked. People who go nuts and do shit like sky diving or become rodeo clowns or teach elementary school are actively bucking the trend. The high risk is inherent, and the reward is variable, but the thrill is constant. Adrenaline becomes nature's consolation prize for being a geography teacher.
What I've been doing lately is making a series of high-risk, long-term bets. It's terrifying. My plans for the future make so much sense to me, but I'm getting a lot of glazed eyes and slack mouths from observers. It's tough not to let this shake my confidence. The only thing to do is double down on this stuff. Losing a big bet hurts, but folding on a bluff is a killer.
Appropriate gambling postscript,
adam
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